


Tap into the Negative

by coyotes



Category: BioShock
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 20:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1524281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coyotes/pseuds/coyotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack is faced with the empty apartment of the man who'd screwed him over and ripped him from the only home he ever thought he had. </p><p>A little venting never hurt anyone, and neither did setting a stuffed bear on fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tap into the Negative

Jack had never so blindly trusted a man.

Never so blindly trusted a man who’d lied to him since before he set foot in this glass tomb beneath the Atlantic. Oh, God. The need to vomit never quite left and he was constantly on the brink of having to bend over by some pillar along the way and do just that; but he knew if he did, his legs might not want to keep going. If he stopped now, he’d have no drive to keep it up and do what he should have. All Tenenbaum worked for, all of the girls he’d saved, none of it would have mattered. He couldn’t do that to someone –

\-- too bad he hadn’t learned from Fontaine on that account. Fontaine was admirably fantastic at what he did; betray, steal, _lie_ , he did it all. Everything bad under the damn sun, he’d probably done it. 

And Jack had trusted the man because he’d talked like he was his friend, nudged Jack through Rapture and planted the idea in Jack’s head that he was a decent man. More than decent; he had a family he loved, he – he’d lied about so much.

His knuckles were white around the wrench he held in one hand, crimson not only with paint but with blood, plowing through the last of the Splicers that stood between him and the house up ahead. The road through the rock garden outside was an annoyingly long one, simply because he’d taken his time and time meant even more of the humans – rabid good-for-nothings on hind legs – coming to join the party he’d never invited them to. 

But long didn’t mean forever. They’d all dropped dead eventually, heads bleeding out or shot down and Jack ignored their bodies riddled along the floor, robots giving their dying whirrs as they smoked along their former masters, and he stepped over them, to the doors up ahead.

Frank Fontaine’s apartment.

Something pricked in his chest – he wished the Lot 192 could be somewhere else, somewhere that didn’t make his nose scrunch up and his hands hold the wrench tightly with both arms across his front like a security blanket.  
One last check to make sure the place was clear of Splicers, and then he swiveled back to the stairs and began to climb. There were so many damn stairs. He hoped that Fontaine had fallen down and broken his nose on those stairs at some point.  
\---  
There was a big open space; books to his left, some rooms on his right. And in the middle – in the middle, there was a bear. A bear with paws in the air, mouth open in a silent roar. Jack tilted his head at it, and then veered off to the right. Even if exploring the place wasn’t exactly what he’d wanted to do, he figured there might be something helpful in here; everything looked practically untouched.

Two couches, another Diary. Jack was hesitant to touch it, hearing the man’s voice more often than he had to felt bizarrely like taking a knife to the back, so he left it there for a little while. Because there was a _kitchen_ , and he turned to it with hopeful eyes, wrench hanging loosely from one of his hands as the other touched over counters, shoes clicking on the floor. 

Everything was a little out of place; rubble, discarded scraps of wall and pans, but otherwise... it looked decent enough. He grabbed for the handle of one fridge, pushed it gently just enough out of the way to see inside and stick his arm through, coming out with something at least somewhat edible. 

He wasn’t really sure what it was. A candy bar?

It was rectangle, anyway. 

Jack tore into it, bit open the wrapper with his teeth and scarfed down about a half of it before he’d rounded around the counters again, noticing now a bag of chips resting on one of the corners of a tabletop. He reflexively dropped the rest of the bar, cheeks full even when he swallowed twice or so, reached out for the chips instead. 

He was inappropriately loud in the quiet, crunching and fumbling the bag around with one hand as he stepped over busted in bits of ceiling, eyed the Audio Diary again as he passed. And he stopped dead in his tracks, turned around and looked at it, knelt down to touch a button that kicked it into life, and then he withdrew, back behind the couches as it started up, eyeing the dinner table that stood there. 

_These sad saps. They come to Rapture thinking they’re gonna be captains of industry…_

Jack balled up the bag with his fist, dropped it onto the ground and looking out at the window beside the table.

_What an angle they gave me…_

He climbed up onto the table, watched the bubbles rise behind the glass. 

_I hand these mugs a cot and a bowl of soup…_

_…gave me their lives…_

_…Who needs an army when I got Fontaine’s Home for the Poor?_

Something within Jack, Jack Wynand, Jack Ryan, sparked and twisted until it had the gears in his head grinding and telling him to do something, get it out of him, get it – 

He shifted one leg back into the air and swung it forward, toe of his shoe hitting a vase on the table and sending it flying to the wall, crashing and shattering there as whatever was inside crumpled lifeless at the bottom of the room. A plate went after that, sound of delicate shards coming apart and sprinkling in the air like sharp confetti. Another plant, another plate, and he hopped off the table, leaving the Audio Log to lay in wait for the next press play that would never come. 

His breaths were heavy and the hair at the back of his neck stood on end like hackles on a dog, eyes dark and the bags under them even darker. It was hard to catch any solid winks in Rapture.

The main room again, and he could have sworn that bear was daring him to fight with it. Goading him on with those dead, fake eyes, the mouth that bore the teeth of a dead thing. Jack stepped up to it and stared right into those glossy balls that’d been placed there in lieu of the real thing, a deep silence passing between him and the bear he decided he didn’t like. Their stare-off was putting him on edge.

So he extended his plasmid hand and set the bear on fire. 

The bear wasn’t staring at him anymore, eyes melting in its face and dripping into its mouth, and Jack grinned, bright and simultaneously confused at the smile entirely. The heat reflected in those eyes not so dark anymore, and he climbed up the steps to one side of the place, wrench switching hands as he held to the railing and climbed fast enough to be considered an upwards trot of sorts, eyes falling to the head of some great big horse-thing on the other side of the place. 

He was downright giddy for no discernible reason, flaming bears on the brain and a strange illumination to the world of venting through violence that hardly ever hurt anyone, unless you were a potted plant or a stuffed bear. So when he reached the top of the stairs it was with a straighter posture, st—

Beeping. Something was about to shoot at him.

Jack backtracked out of the room he’d walked into with a cry of surprise as bullets whizzed through the air he’d been standing in just moments before, smile wiped off of his face and replaced with a deep scowl. Why was there a damn turret in the place? What could it have to _guard_? 

Well, a lot of things. Realistically. Fontaine had to keep himself well-guarded, right? Jack peeked around the corner, glared at the parts of the turret he could see over the counter it was behind. Jack just lowered himself, patting himself on the back for being so smart, creeping over to the side of the wall.

He proceeded to beat the shit out of the machine before it could see him, a whole lot of mechanical groans and clanks and the thing fell apart. Jack nearly raised his wrench in victory. 

Nearly, because he was too busy looking all saucer-eyed at the rows of alcohol behind the broken machine.

Alcohol.

He’d been protecting his _booze_.

Jack wasn’t a heavy drinker. He didn’t like it not being aware of his surroundings down in Rapture, and even before he hadn’t been much of a drinker. His body wasn’t used to it. But the way they were just sitting there on the shelves being protected by some deadly security really made him want to finish all of it off. 

The rebellion won out, and there was nothing but silence on the other end of the tunnel. Tunnel being radio; neither Tenenbaum nor Fontaine had checked up on him since he’d entered the building. It was nice, being alone with no devil or angel whispering in one ear. Jack grabbed a few bottles by the neck and placed his wrench into a holster at his side just to grab a few more. 

He didn’t plan on drinking all of it. Not even half of it. Jack squinted at the pool table off in the corner of this side of the apartment and the red padding of it but was otherwise uninterested, instead turning and walking out into the place opposite of which he came, the one with the animal heads sticking out of it. That bear was still burning as he walked out with alcohol coming out the wazoo and it brought the fire back into his eyes quite literally. He set a few of the bottles down by his feet and held one in each hand before putting one of them to his lips and sucking from the tip whatever he could get without making himself choke.

It was sort of disgusting and made his eyes water, but that was okay. Revenge was sweet, even if it was just wasting a little bit of alcohol for now. He licked at what hadn’t made it into his mouth and dripped down the neck instead; put it back on the floor by the others. At that point he placed his feet apart in some kind of a baseball stance and threw the only bottle he held, watched it fly across the room and nail the window behind the bear and effectively leaving a smear of liquid on the thick glass. 

Jack actually laughed, but it was more of a giggle. He picked another bottle up, repeated the drinking of the one he’d initially drank, and then chucked a full one again, but that time it hit the white bear in the center of the room. The one that was still smoking. His heart swelled at the sight of it, victory and the thought of this being something that Fontaine wouldn’t want being all he needed out of it, and so he basked in it for a moment, leaned off the railing and shut his eyes. 

\---  
He’d ended up cross-eyed and unsteady on his feet; after a while he’d just started dropping the bottles and watching them fall and gasped as each one hit the ground below in a pool of glass and whatever it had inside to the brim like he was surprised. He was lax and happy, for a moment, and there was still nothing at the other end of the radio. Maybe he’d accidentally turned it off at some point.

Either way, who _cared_. He was peachy as peachy could be, rosy cheeks and all, and he couldn’t give a darn about anything just now. Nobody had bothered him, and everything was okay. Whatever he’d been pouring down his maw the past twenty minutes or so had a way of numbing out the pain of betrayal and self-inflicted agony. 

Ha ha, that sounded a little silly. 

When there were no more bottles left even after he’d gone back for another trip to the no-longer-guarded stash, Jack couldn’t help the dribbling sense of disappointment flowing in his head. But every bit of fun had to come to an end sometime, and Jack shrugged it off. 

Every time he looked back up to that giant snout of that huge brown cow-sorta thing it got funnier, funny because of how out of place it looked. He couldn’t see that swimming around at the bottom of the ocean, and it set him into a fit of quiet laughter as he stumbled around into the room he hadn’t gone in yet. He was wheeling to the right, left, couldn’t walk in a straight line if he tried, oh, look, was that Lot –

Jack yelped (more of a shrill scream) so loud it echoed in the silence as something shocked him and he fell back, landing on his ass and pressed up against the opposite wall with his heart beating 90 miles an hour and eyes wide out of pure fear. It didn’t exactly sober him up completely but he could tell what it was now – there were traps here. Electricity had jolted up from below his knee and it _hurt_. 

Not that it hurt now, it was a sudden thing that came and went, but he sniffled anyway because it’d scared him out of his stupor, his stupidly pleased moment of freedom. Jack pulled his knees up to his chest and sat there for a few good moments, rattling briefly with dry sobs until he could breathe again, and even then he still had to recover. 

When he did, though, the change was immediate. His lips curled upwards again and he laughed to clear his thoughts and wash the rest of his feelings away, laughed because it’d been funny, being startled so much by something so simple. He stood up again and brushed off his pants, decided to wait before he’d gone through the place a little better to pass the last wire that blocked him off from that room.

\---  
Jack hadn’t questioned the fireplace, and in fact he sort of liked it. Why it was still burning, he couldn’t guess, but it was nice to look at some fire that hadn’t come out of his own hand. It was warm, dangerously so, and so he didn’t sit by it too long. He didn’t want to fall asleep here. 

The bed hadn’t been much better, but he’d found himself touching it anyway. Doing things a clear-headed Jack would never do. He touched the sheets, turned around and fell back to look up at the sky. Water sky. Down here, the Atlantic Ocean _was_ the sky. No birds, just fish and whales and turtles. 

He rolled on the bed until his stomach was pressed to the mattress and clutched his hands into the sheets, buried his face into the blanket and inhaled, resting there with his eyes shut and nose buried into it. 

All until he realized what he was doing and he pulled back, stepped away from the bed. 

And then promptly forgot about the entire experience. 

Given that his mind was wired to only focus on one thing at a time right now, that wasn’t such a difficult feat. 

He missed Kansas.

But part of him wondered if Kansas was even real, or just another thing that Fontaine had cooked up in the little fantasy dome he’d placed Jack in to let him ripen up. That would be embarrassing, but he didn’t think that Kansas was part of the fake part. Fontaine wouldn’t have gone to such a length for his illusion. It hadn’t taken much for Jack to cling to his real life anyway. Jack wasn’t so hard to please or trick. Simultaneously, even. 

There was still half a bottle of good alcohol left (he guessed it was good if Fontaine had it all behind a robot guard) that he’d found and forgotten about until now and he plopped himself down at the hallway with nothing in it but a view of the ocean around him, having done enough wandering in a place he’d never wanted to visit at all.

After a few swigs, he suddenly felt like singing a song he’d heard once. He only knew a few words thanks to an impression he couldn’t forget from one of Cohen’s men but he sounded it out anyway, less bitter and more of a chance to say something to no one but himself with a rusty mouth that had hardly spoken a word through his journey in Rapture, a slurred and hardly mocking “Rise, Rapture, Rise,” falling from his lips with each word spoken longer than intended to sound like singing, followed up by a loud but not-so-violent “mother _fucker_ ,” to quote that same man (smiling afterwards simply because it was at Fontaine, not Cohen. Some of his first words down here, and they were directed at that sack of shit). Not that that particular one of Cohen’s men had invented the phrase, but he’d said it before…

Before Jack killed him.

It was still fresh in his mind, those words. 

The sigh he gave after was odd; reminiscent, sad, pitying, pitiful, ashamed. 

Fontaine had brought him here, but Jack'd hurt those men. He’d hurt a lot of people. But he was going to save some, too. And that was okay, he could do that.

Jack had stopped moving, but he hadn’t lost his drive. Just a little breather, a chance to go back and look at what he’d done. Hector, had been his name. Sitting outside the place Jasmine had died. Where Andrew Ryan had killed her. Jasmine. He felt bad for her too, like it’d somehow been his fault that her body was still there. 

There was no proper burial at sea for the people he’d seen, and that was… sad.

He sat in silence for a moment and did nothing but think of those people who’d all been ruined by this place. Apologized for things that weren’t ever within his control to help. He’d only traveled on the road meant for him to take.

Jack got up off the floor and spat on it unceremoniously, rubbed it in with his shoe before knocking the bottle he had against the wall nearest him and letting the bottom of it break ‘till it was in halves, and then he dropped the other half. Thump.

Whoever said that you don’t fuck Fontaine was wrong, and he damn-near waddled back to the room with the real bottle he needed, stepped carefully over the last wire.

Took it. Lot 192.

Jack was going to kill the son of a bitch. 

The only thing he’d miss was Atlas.

But Atlas had been fabricated just like the life before him, and he wasn’t going to look back now on fake pasts he’d never truly lived. He was going to _kill_ him. And he was going to save everyone. Rapture was his, and he was going to release it from the shackles each leader before him had placed around it, around _him_ , he was going to be the one to set the world right again.


End file.
